Lazarus Industries

Yet another school project handed in. In this one we were supposed to make a theoretical alphabet from a future where a bunch of languages merge and to make a sign out of it.

For my future, global warming made surviving below the temperate regions of the world nearly impossible. Mass migrations both north and south have been made necessary to escape the deadly heat in the large band around the equator. This means that the previously barren regions of northern Canada, Scandinavia, and Russia have become very valuable as housing space becomes more and more scarce.

While the countries of South America, Africa and most of Asia fight over the habitable parts of Antarctica in what is now the bloodiest and most desperate war in history, the leaders of North America and Northern Europe formed a coalition to better keep the human race alive.

Part of this treaty is the formation of a new alphabet so the gap between the previously disparate cultures of Eastern and Western Europe, as well as North America does not seem so large. Certain consonants were borrowed from Cyrillic, some vowels from the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, but mostly Swedish) and adapted them to the English alphabet. The reason English was not adapted to other languages was because English was maintained by the European Union as the universal language, though it was almost beat out by German in 2045. Also because it was specified that it was being made for an English-speaking audience. :/

Lazarus Industries, based in the city of New Yaroslavl’, British Columbia, has been at the forefront of life-extending technologies for the past 125 years. So far, however, no one has died because of their bodies deteriorating. What they do is they manipulate your very DNA and keep the telomeres – the parts of chromosomes that cause cell death – from shrinking with each division. The trick is to do this without causing unrestrained cell reproduction, because that’s essentially what cancer is.

The process is long and complex, and repeated treatments are needed in order to stay essentially immortal. If you don’t keep up with the treatments, your cells start to reproduce uncontrollably, and you essentially become made of cancer.

A key aspect of Lazarus Industries is the political connections it has. For example, they kept Vladimir Putin alive until 2122, until he was assassinated by a Latvian insurgent in response to Russia’s continued attempts to annex the former Soviet states. This isn’t the only government that Lazarus has its fingers in – because it controls the life or death of the world’s most powerful leaders, this company essentially is in charge of the entire planet.

TL;DR, this is a sign for a company that will extend your life until you stop paying and then it gives you cancer. Also I like making up hypothetical sci-fi situation.